Month: February 2014

THE ART BELOW CREATED BY DANNY WHITEFIELD IS THE RISE AND REBUILD – THE NATIONAL CORVETTE MUSEUM TRIBUTE PRINT,
Based on Danny’s valued and sentimental interest in the museum he will donate a portion of proceeds of the print to help with the relieve efforts.Purchase at here…

After much speculation as to the fate of the eight Corvettes damaged in the sinkhole that formed under the National Corvette Museum earlier this week, General Motors announced yesterday that it will oversee restoration efforts for all eight cars.

That would mean that all eight would need to be recovered from the sinkhole under the museum’s Skydome, which measures 40 feet across and 25 to 30 feet deep. While the museum has hired a structural engineering firm, which has already determined that the perimeter of the Skydome is stable, neither the museum nor the firm has yet to confirm how the cars can be pulled out of the sinkhole, though staff of the museum and the engineering firm say they’re confident the cars can be extracted.

The sinkhole formed early Wednesday morning when nobody was at the museum. Of the 30 or so cars in the Skydome at the time, the sinkhole swallowed a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder, a 2009 ZR1 “Blue Devil,” a 1962 Corvette, a 1984 PPG Pace Car, a 1992 “1 Millionth” Corvette, a 1993 40th Anniversary Corvette, a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette, and a 2009 “1.5 Millionth” Corvette. Of the eight, two (the ZR-1 Spyder and the ZR-1 “Blue Devil”) were on loan from GM, one (the PPG Pace Car) was on permanent loan from PPG, and the rest were either donated to or bought by the museum. The rest of the cars in the Skydome at the time of the collapse have since been moved out of it.

“Nobody else has a better understanding of the significance of these cars and what it takes to properly restore them than the engineers and designers at Chevrolet where they were developed,” said Jeff Lamarche, the new manager of the Bowling Green Corvette assembly plant, in a press conference Thursday afternoon.

According to both Jeff and a GM press release, Ed Welburn, vice president of GM Global Design, will oversee the restoration efforts, which will take place at GM’s Mechanical Assembly facility in Warren, Michigan, which maintains and restores the vehicles in GM’s Heritage Center. While the total value of the cars for insurance purposes has yet to be released, a GM spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times earlier this week that each of the two GM-owned cars were worth about $1 million apiece.

In the same press conference, Mike Murphy of Scott, Murphy, and Daniel Construction, which the museum has hired to oversee the sinkhole repair efforts, said the sinkhole is repairable and that the building remains in good condition. He said that it would take up to two to three weeks for the firm to even begin to retrieve the cars and then another four to six days total to bring them up. “We have to make sure it is safe and that we can remove the vehicles without any further damage,” he said.

Wendell Strode, executive director of the museum, said that he anticipates having the Skydome fully repaired by mid-August, in time for the museum’s 20th anniversary celebrations.

Well I see its true. This is a horrible thing to happen to such a great Museum. Naturally I will try to help in way of donating a portion of my Corvette art profits to help them out. I have a valued and sentimental interest in the museum as I was commission to create a 4 ft by 8 ft wall mural for the entrance display. I hope it didn’t get destroyed in the damage. Also I was granted the privilege of having the late Dale Earnhardt Sr to sign 2 of my Corvette prints which were on sale at the time. Sure hope things work out for them. If anyone would to purchase a Corvette print to help out the Museum please go to Danny Whitfield Corvette Prints

Though Cadillac never offered pink as a factory option in 1959, that hasn’t kept pink 1959 Cadillac convertibles from becoming iconic expressions of postwar American exuberance, nor has it kept Hollywood filmmakers from perennially featuring them. One such pink 1959 Cadillac – the titular vehicle of the 1989 Clint Eastwood flick Pink Cadillac – will soon head to auction, though, ironically, nowhere near the United States.

A staple in film and in rock and roll since Elvis cruised around in one in the 1950s, pink Cadillacs seemed to return to fashion in the mid- to late 1980s, when Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called “Pink Cadillac,” and when such cars appeared prominently in the 1986 Danny DeVito movie Wise Guys and a pair of 1989 movies, Fletch Lives and Pink Cadillac. The latter movie featured Clint Eastwood and Bernadette Peters and plenty of screen time for a 1959 Cadillac Series 62 convertible while the two main characters drove across the American West. As many reviewers noted, the movie seemed to exist only to ham up the juxtaposition of Eastwood and such a flamboyant car.1959 CADILLAC PINK ELDORADO BIARRITZART BY DANNY WHITIFELD

The Cadillac used for the film, chassis number 59F043341, originally came from Cadillac’s Detroit assembly plant painted white with a 325-hp, four-barrel 390-cu.in. V-8 under the hood. According to Bonhams, which will offer the Cadillac at no reserve at its Les Grandes Marques du Monde au Grand Palais auction, it was repainted pink for the movie and has remained so through a 1994 restoration. Bonhams expects the Cadillac to sell for €25,000 to €35,000, or about $34,000 to $47,000.

A number of other American cars will cross the block at the same auction, including a Hemi-powered 1966 Plymouth Satellite, a pair of 1959 Fords – one a Sunliner, the other a Skyliner – and a 1959 Imperial Crown Southampton four-door hardtop sedan.
The Bonhams Grand Palais auction will take place Thursday. For more information, visit Bonhams.com.